Optical disk recorders and players exhibit error prone peculiarities requiring error recovery procedures that have not been necessary for other data recorders such as magnetic disk recorders. The peculiarity of many optical disk recorders include multiple embossed sector identification signals for each sector, higher data error rates because of small areas of the optical disk used to record bits of such data, error growth caused by aging of the optical media as currently used, high track densities yielding a negative impact on seek reliability and implications of automatic reallocation of data assigned to one sector to another sector. The latter item is described in the AMERICAN NATIONAL STANDARD INSTITUTE (ANSI) proposed standard X3.131-198X SCSI-II, revision 10B dated Aug. 22, 1989, particularly in pages 8-27 through 8-29 and pages 15-1 through 15-30. The proposed standard is published in August of 1989 by committee X3B11. What is needed are procedures and mechanisms for handling temporary, recoverable and unrecoverable errors in the sector identifications (ID's) and in the data recording areas. It is also desired to isolate optical media caused errors from hardware errors. Recorders can automatically recover from some errors. Such errors are called soft errors. Magneto-optic recorders require a redefinition for these soft errors. A mechanism is desired for handling the automatic reassignment of data assigned defective sectors which store data or are intended to store data which complies with the new SCSI-II reallocation definition, as set forth in the above-mentioned proposed ANSI standard.